Why would anyone be shocked that the NAACP oppose vouchers? As soon as minority kids do well, the welfare pimps are out of a job.

ANY school system which could cherry-pick the students they wish to serve, and dump any who turn out not to be students would work well and show high achievement rankings -- INCLUDING PUBLIC SCHOOLS. As it is, the public system has, by law, to serve 'em all. It must take what's left when parents who take active interest in their kids' education, and can afford to (either in cash or in vouchers), send theirs elsewhere because of defects in the current system.

As a public (high) school teacher I am, while gravely concerned about student achievement, appalled that the right seems fixated on "vouchers" and with the demise of public education, in apparent utter disregard of the full consequences.

Where public education is a mess is mainly in our having to deal with so many non-students in our classrooms designed for real students. I challenge each promoter of vouchers to attend a few days' classes at a local public school before making any such recommendations.

You would be abhorred at the unintended consequences of dismantling the current system with nothing better than "vouchers" to replace it. Ignoring all the other inherent issues, one simple fact is that the infrastructure to take on all public school children with vouchers does not exist. Or, do you mean not to take on all of them?

- a conservative public school teacher, "urban" Sacramento - where the racial divide is 30/30/30/10, or so.

So, call me stupid.

Back in the day, at the founding of our country, education was largely the undertaking of private enterprise and philanthropy.

Then, the dogma of "public education" began, and has since become so entrenched that it is scarcely questioned.

I well understand that popular education is the key to avoiding class-based intergenerational transfers of power, as is still the case in Europe, for example.

But that begs the question.

Should government be involved in education at all?

Let's say we just shut down the public schools. I'm not kidding. Close the public schools, and the state-sponsored universities. And free up the associated tax dollars.

The evidence suggests that churches, philanthropists, and parents do a better job of educating children, especially those who are most disadvantaged.

And BTW, kobekko, show me the evidence that the parochial schools are "cherry picking." They are not getting better students. They are getting better parents who want a choice. Or, increasingly, they are not getting kids at all because the parents are opting for home-schooling, and those kids outperform the national averages on every score.

If there were no free public education system, I guess every parent would have to make a choice.

Your NEA bullshit doesn't work for me. The public school system is a monopoly that needs to be broken.

Sobekko, as an eduacator, I would assume you would put the student's best interests first. Instead, you place the "institution's" interests first.

Screw the institution. It's mismanaged. It's run by political hacks who constantly cry for more funding. Throwing money at a school doesn't do a damned thing. We need teachers who are willing to hold the students to high standard and, if necessary, hold the parents to a high standard as well.

'',,,embarrass by outperforming''
You hit the nail on the head Ace.

These student achievement numbers are so astounding, I wonder why the opposition to such success is not called ''vicious elitist rascism''. I mean, ''wonder'', in the rhetorical Danish-prince-named-Hamlet sense of the word.

Perhaps the most pernicious effect of public education in America was the creation of a permanent under-class.

Court-ordered bussing in the '70s and '80s was based on the proposition that inter-city school zones reflected established racial neighborhood housing patterns, which were not voluntary but were the artifact of white racism that had to be rectified by "integration." Never mind what people actually wanted. So, the bussing began. Thus, the courts stimulated massive white flight to the suburbs, leaving cities with poor minority populations that could not fund their schools, and more frantic court orders directing inter-district taxi-cab rides for minority children (which few wanted), and generations of minority children consigned to failing school systems that did little more than prepare them for a life of welfare dependancy, or crime.

It's the hypocrisy that kills me. Everybody thinks that Chinatown in San Francisco is cool. It's a tourist attraction.

But the vibrant black communities that existed in the '50s and '60s in American cities (e.g., Harlem) were systematically eradicated by Hubert Humphrey liberals who destroyed their school systems, gutted their churches, and bulldozed their neighborhoods to erect soulless and crime-ridden housing projects.

:But the vibrant black communities that existed in the '50s and '60s in American cities (e.g., Harlem) were systematically eradicated by Hubert Humphrey liberals who destroyed their school systems, gutted their churches, and bulldozed their neighborhoods to erect soulless and crime-ridden housing projects.:

I was surprised when, in the whole '10 most destructive books ever written' discussion a few months back, no one mentioned LeCorbusier's 'Ville Radieuse'. The holy text of 60's-70's shit modernist architecture and careless fucking with people's lives modernist city planning. And, of course, like every other bullshit ideology, it's still making the rounds of every 3rd world country planners can beguile or dictators coerce into redeveloping vast swathes of state land one enormous, badly-designed chunk at a time. Every planning professor I've ever had claims that the days of careless, unaccountable social engineering are over--we don't DO slum clearance any more--and then writhes in obscene megalomaniacal excitement and well-nigh erotic ecstasy at the prospect of redeveloping all...that..(drool)...state..owned...land in China. Not to mention Cuba. Hundreds of years from now, those poor bastards will STILL be cleaning up after the vast architectural mess currently being made of their country by carelessly experimenting liberal Western architects and theorists.

And here. . .oh-ho, God--Kelo was a fucking wet dream come true for these democratically unaccountable little social-engineering Speers.

Deep breaths, everyone. Please don't ignore the voices of kobekko and me, who care so deeply for our country and our students.

The "Institution" of public education is what build communities. Beyond the curriculum. schools offer the activities like sports, music, drama, art, etc. that allow individual talents to develop. I completely agree that the federal governemnt has no place in education, but please think about the statistics some offer re homeschooling: OF COURSE those students outperform AVERAGE public scores--they have the most devoted parents. It does not necessarily follow that those same HS students score better than they would have if they attended a decent public school.

In short, yes, each school district needs to take a tough look at itself and clean house where it needs to by electing a board of school directors, but sweeping condemnation of public schools is unfair.

Michael said:

The evidence suggests that churches, philanthropists, and parents do a better job of educating children, especially those who are most disadvantaged.

If there were no free public education system, I guess every parent would have to make a choice.

People choose to have children. I've always kind of resented that people like me who choose not to have children still have to pay for the education of other peoples' kids.

I know the argument is that an educated populace is good for everybody. But why shouldn't parents have to pay more taxes? They are sucking more from the system. Or let them fund private schools on their own.

Just leave me out of it--I made my choice, you made yours. Why do I have to fund your choice?

Messed up the italics--the second sentence in my comment should have been italicized as well.

kobekko, why do you side with the institution over the child?
You 'grave concern' does seem to extend to children at all, but only to the institution that feeds you. My wife is a public school teacher and she, like most of her fellow teachers, support vouchers. Becasue they see what the NEA/lefty control of the public system has done.
Back in the days before Vonnegut turned into an anti-American bigot and wrote good stories, he wrote a story that exactly serves as a metaphor for what your side of the argument stands for:
the story where the dnacers, weighed down by weights and blinded by thick, clouded glasses are stumbling around on stage and cut the weights free and toss away the glasses. The beauty of their dance is plain to see and quite moving. So of course they are shot because it is unequal for great dancers to soar free.
There is no defense for the status quo of state enforced monopoly on the type of education chosen, other than the defense provided by the brute force people like you seem to demand. The force at the end of a gun.
The goal that each school should produce the same quality of education and that every school should have equal resources to teach all students is an illusion. The idea that it will ever work is a delusion.
The NEA/lefty hacks/pretentious judges enforcing that delusion is dangerous.

Deep breaths, everyone. Please don't ignore the voices of kobekko and me, who care so deeply for our country and our students.

Have courage noble lamprey. There will always be plenty of soft bellies available.

Goddess of the Classroom: One of the problems with your approach is that the students who want to learn are hindered by the teachers having to spend too much teaching time on discipline. I don't think that the home schooled children would do just as well as in a public school for just that reason. Same thing goes with kids using the vouchers. So long as we have wimpy school administrators we will have behavioral problems in school - there is no reason why non-problem student have to be punished with a less than optimal education.

When a town is suffering budget crises in my state, the problem is usually educators.

The schools in my area get unbelievable largesse though they consistently mismanage funds.

When you suggest that perhaps the children could live without astroturf and giant lights on their football field (for six home games a year), they shriek like you're proposing to gut the school.

When you point out that other sectors of the budget have had to go without additional funds while the teachers always seem to get their raises, they put their fingers in their ears, because you might be suggesting that they aren't the most important people in the universe.

And their solution to every problem is to raise taxes. IOW, everybody else should feel a pinch, but not them.

I was trying to find some good quotes by Thoma... I mean, Alexis de Tocqueville (who was a man) on this subject, but I don't have the time I need to do so.

Let me just say that American public education was pretty good until John Dewey and his Marxist disciples started screwing with it. It plummeted to near rock bottom when the U.S. Department of Education was founded by the Carter administration. It's only coming back now because we parents are taking charge, albeit slowly and weakly.

Lipstick, it's those children you don't want to pay to educate who will be funding your SS, Medicare and all the other direct and indirect governmental benefits that you will be looking for when you retire. If you want to see the potential societal consequences of not having children, I suggest you read Mark Steyn http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007760

Let me just say that American public education was pretty good until John Dewey and his Marxist disciples started screwing with it.

While Dewey and the other Marxists did indeed ruin the lives of countless numbers of people, the government school system was always a socialist idea, and openly so, from its very beginning. There's no way for a government school system to exist without some driving ideology of collectivism behind it. It was never "pretty good" and can never be, not over the long term nor for the vast majority of those involved.

Government schools exists, and has always existed, to:
(1) find a way to spend tax money (and thus justify its collection),
(2) employ life-long political supporters, and
(3) occupy their captives' time in whatever way that promises to minimize the incidents of violent revolt (much like prison).

Rigorous teaching (in a compulsory attendance regime, at least) tends to run counter to Purpose No. 3 -- it makes the inmates uncomfortable. It also tends to place greater demands on the (unionized) teachers, which interferes with Purpose No. 2.

The entire program is rotten to the core, and no amount of tinkering will ever fix it, not over the long term. The economic forces of incentives and disincentives are always going to be stacked against educational achievement.

The whole idea behind vouchers was to sever the tie between money and control -- the state would provide the money, but school choice would supposedly force the administrators to cater to the students' needs and parents' demands.

How many of us honestly believe that the government's will to power will be impeded over the long term? The government ALWAYS seeks to control. That's what it does. The idea that it is going to just give that up, when the State is paying for it, is absurd.

What will inevitably happen is that the government will gradually increase its control over the (nominally) private schools, until they are so dependent on State money that they do as the State wants.

That's not a private school system. There's a term for a system in which institutions are nominally in the hands of private entities but are virtually totally controlled by the government -- fascism, aka corporatism.

Educators who defend the public school system baffle me. Easily the most horrible years of my life were spent suffering through the ignominies of public school. Not until I was in high school, when I had some choice over which classes I could take and who I could associate with.

I don't know a teacher who is happy with the 30-kids-and-a-curriculum method of schooling. Let me rephrase that--I don't know any good teachers who are happy with it. They all struggle through the obstacle. They aren't pleased with it.

More reasons why we should eliminate these irresponsible and incompetent judges they have prooven they are fools

I think that public schools could reasonably be (almost) phased out. When I lived in Cleveland, because of the state of public schools, there were private schools every three or four blocks. I would estimate that fully half of Cleveland's kids went to private school.

If tax dollars, in the form of vouchers, supported the less advantaged parents, then the private school industry would boom. Being able to choose where your child went, and judge to school's progress, would prevent the private schools from sinking as far as public shools have done.

Why do I have to fund your choice?

I understand the sentiment, but systems of taxation for public works and institutions are inherently unfair. You pay taxes for roads, highways and bridges that you do not drive on, books at the library you choose not to read, state, local and county agencies that don't impact your life at all.

Businesses do not have kids, but pay property taxes. Older citizens have no kids in school any more (although some tax jurisdictions do grant an exemption recognizing that).

Our state legislature has struggled for years to define "fair" school funding. They aren't close.

I think we're talking around each other Phinn. The reason I wanted to find Tocqueville quotes was because he observed the best public school system ever devised, which at the time was in America.

The problem is not the fact that education is facilitated by the government, per se, but the fact that the government in question has so radically changed from Tocqueville's day. Public education back then was more akin to homeschooling compared to today's Soviet-modeled institutions. Education was for the most part highly decentralized, strictly beholden only to municipal governments.

This blog post by a Minnesota man hits on a lot of the things I agree with.

The problem is not the fact that education is facilitated by the government, per se

I disagree. The only successful aspects of our early government-run school system, such as they were, were the ones that were borrowed from the private schools. This is much the same phenomenon as any other socialist enterprise -- it can only succeed by emulating a private counterpart. But it cannot do so for long (or otherwise, why not just keep the private counterpart? Eventually, they will part ways.)

My point is that the forces (i.e., the interlocking incentives and disincentives) that are inherent in any government-run enterprise are always going to produce the kinds of things we see in education today -- skyrocketing costs, near-total unresponsiveness to its erstwhile consumers, etc.

Socialist systems are, by their very nature, cut off from prices -- they do not rise or fall based on the extent to which they meet consumer demand. (That's their whole raison d'etre, actually -- to get away from the whole "price" thing.)

As a result, they cannot engage in the simple economic calculation of deciding how to best spend their time and money. This is true whether one is in the business of providing educational services or making widgets.

To goddess... & kobekko: I'm sure happy you think public education has been so successful. If you count all the little socialist Hitlers that run all the socialist planning departments in the country, then yes, they are successful. If you count all the public schools (lower & higher) that teach their charges that protest is the most sincere form of patriotism, then yes, they are successful. And if you count all the brain-dead weasels who teach "diversity" as anything that is P.C. but not anything that disagrees with the "progressives" (what a misnomer that is!), then yes, schools are successful.

In the meantime, I, as an employer, struggle to find anyone who knows the rudiments of simple plane geometry, who can string together enough words to make a coherent sentence, and who can produce written communication that isn't full of grammatical and spelling errors.

My other point about all this is, why would the NAACP or any other "minority" group want a voucher system? That allows the charges to flee from the modern day plantation, and they can't have that. As soon as the slaves know they are slaves, and how badly they have been lied to and mistreated, there will be rebellion such as we haven't seen since the mid-nineteenth century.

So florida needs a constitutional amendment to have vouchers? That's crazy! Is it doable?

Argh, that FL Supreme Court is a crime against humanity.

Let me just say that American public education was pretty good until John Dewey and his Marxist disciples started screwing with it.

Hmmmmm. Let's see. Did that happen in 1897, with the publication of My Pedagogic Creed and his work at Chicago's privately funded Hull House? Or, was it 1938 publication of Experience and Education, inspiring creation of lab schools at universities around the world?

Seems when Dewey and his dark marxist minions were creating schools envied around the world, and when the GI Bill turned out the most productive workforce in history, things just turned to shit, huh?

But, I'll stay with Dewey. He tried. Now, schools turn out cheerful ropbots. People who "do" and not "make." Ivan Illich is right. Maybe time to close the schools.

I mean really, their argument is basically "Better everyone fail than a few succeed while others don't do as well, even though overall everyone does better."

Wasn't that pretty much the rationale for choosing communism vs. capitalism?

ergastularius, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?

dave

there's a face. it's your face. stomped by a boot. forever.

makes ya'll horny, don'it?

really? is it from Cavender's Boot City?

have you ever been in a bath house?

that predator/prey thing I thought was clever. But you've done it too much. ditto the fag-hating thing too. but old.

why don't you just prove you know something, dave? wouldn't that be easier?

ergastularius, have you ever seen a grown man naked?

"Sobekko, as an eduacator, I would assume you would put the student's best interests first."

Bart, it's "kobekko." You're getting him confused with the love child I had with Kojak.

What I have to say about the state of Public Education can be summed up by where I live. The KC,MO school district has spent 1.5 billion dollars via Judicial decree and still is not fully accredited by the state.

Vouchers work! They work for students that want to learn, in an environment that is conducive to learning. Do they help those students that are just marking time until graduation? No, not immediately. But, by making those schools that do not achieve accountable and create improvement they will help future students. Nothing "creates" like competition.

Vouchers in combination with "No Child Left Behind" and (very important) increasing teacher compensation to the level of a "professional" will result in an improved educational system, dedicated to educating children, not perpetuating the status quo.

One final item would be the icing on the cake: Reinstitute the Vocational Education program, teaching non academic students a pliable trade in Senior High School, with advanced training in a Junior College.

I'd add to that rls: reform the whole tenure situation.

Yeah,

What is the purpose of tenure for an elementary or High School teacher? So they can do all kinds of academic research free from the worry of retribution? Even if you believe in the idea of tenure for college professors (I don't), there is absolutely no reason for tenure for k-12 teachers.

Lipstick, it's those children you don't want to pay to educate who will be funding your SS, Medicare and all the other direct and indirect governmental benefits that you will be looking for when you retire.

Actually, I will not be looking for those benefits. Lucky me.

And Dave, regarding bridges--if I want to, I can get in my car and drive across the country and use every highway and bridge, so I don't have a problem funding that sort of thing.

Everybody else, just keep your damn kids off my lawn. (grumble grumble)

And Dave, regarding bridges--if I want to, I can get in my car and drive across the country and use every highway and bridge, so I don't have a problem funding that sort of thing

Sure you can. You can also have kids, put em in public schools. Point was that the tax methodology isn't usually going to take your choice into account. So yeah, it's unfair. Alternatives?

I'm sure there are a few exceptions.. hotel use taxes come to mind.

So yeah, it's unfair. Alternatives?

How about: any kid I who annoys me by screaming in a restaurant I get to put in a cauldron and make into a tasty stew?

mmmm, peace and quiet AND good, tasty, tender stew...

er, ignore the extra "I" in that comment.

AND, why not taxes for school use? Fund your own little darlings--I'm going to Tahiti... :)

"Education in America is innovative and efficient. No doubt the children in America will be the future learders of the entire world. In France, the schools are producing nincompoops and cowards. Also, the American children are not stinky."

~Alex de Tocqueville

How's that, Sue?

Sobek - My apologies on the name mix-up. Most o the time, I mess with people's names on purpose, but some of the time I really am like Archie Bunker with names.

Ergotrogolite -- Don't start with the "fag-hating" thing, you foolish politically correct gay monkey. No one here hates fags.

So the idea is that the good students with the parents who care about education will take their vouchers and go elsewhere, leaving the poor students with the neglectful parents in the local public school.

Why is this a bad thing?

The poor students who aren't getting motivation at home will be in smaller schools where they can get more individual attention, and have a chance to succeed. Everyone wins.

Poopie.

That was my post at 4:28pm

If it were delegated to me to administer this judge's b!tchsl@p, before I did it, my question for him would be, "How is publicly funded education not a public education system? No, listen to me. If the government is paying for the education, how is it reneging on its supposed constitutional responsibility to fund education publicly?" Then I'd let him have it until he tearfully admitted how stupidly hairsplitting he had been.

My biggest worry about vouchers all along has been this very thing, that it could lead to creeping public takeover of private schools, eroding their independence and the discretion of their individual founders and administrators. And having read Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, I'm not exactly favorably impressed by the consequences of the "GI Bill" for American universities. I can comfortably do without public funding of "private" education if it leads to schools being overrun and annexed to mass taste.

Yeah, that's "elitist." (Bloom again: The Right are those who accept the necessary existence of natural inequality.) But as for this judge, he's denied what's most obvious and most worrisome about vouchers, that their source and end is public and that they will put schools under competitive pressure to conform to public opinion as it's embodied in the vouchers' bearers.

Kralizec

People choose to have children. I've always kind of resented that people like me who choose not to have children still have to pay for the education of other peoples' kids.

I'm with you, Sasquatch.

I'll tell you a story. When my kids were little, we lived in the inner city of St. Louis. We weren't affluent then. But we scraped together the tuition so that my kids could go to the Lutheran school operated by my congregation about a block away.

The school, operated by this historically German church, had a pretty high representation of blacks, along with kids from the Vietnamese community that was settling in near south St. Louis.

The point being, when my daughter wanted a Cabbage Patch Doll for her birthday, she wanted the black Cabbage Patch Doll, because that's what her best friend Megan had (Megan was African-American). So, we got her a black Cabbage Patch Doll.

I'm kind of glad that I was poor when my kids were little. To this day, they are not snobs, and they are not racists.

I've always kind of resented that people like me who choose not to have children still have to pay for the education of other peoples' kids.

That's no different than the resentment that people who *do* have children feel when they see their tax dollars go to a school system that doesn't meet their needs. Unfortunately, vouchers can help correct the latter, but not the former, complaint.

Here in Colorado we don't have vouchers, but the traditional public schools are supplemented by a charter school system and options schools which combine to offer a range of educational experiences. It's worked out very well for my kids - so much so that I've lost a lot of the voucher fever.

I had this longwinded rambling post about how the current sutides on the 'effectivness' of the public school system was flawed by the collection method and how it was interpeted (ok, i said "bullshit", but it's the same idea), however I think it can all really be summed up as:
There is evidence to suggest that the form of government we have only functions properly when the body poilitic is well educated and properly informed. The question is whether the education of the nation's body is sufficently in the best interest of the republic that government should be invovled, and the extent of that inolvement. Short and simple.